My Best Friend's Wedding
by hannahncakes
Summary: River makes a speech at her best friend's wedding reflecting on her life with a certain Doctor. A nice dollop of fluff to help us through our Doctor-free days. One-shot.


My Best Friend's Wedding

**Disclaimer: **None of these characters are mine. I so wish they were.

_Author's Note: SPOILERS for AGMGTW. I know some of our American friends still haven't seen it so if you're unspoiled pop back in a few days to read this, yeah? Not a lot else to say about this apart from it's been bouncing around my head all day and now it's 1am and I'm writing it instead of sleeping. Oops. In this story I have decided that River hasn't gone to prison yet, so yeah… deal with it. Hehe. Enjoy…_

All my life my mum told me stories about you. "My raggedy Doctor" she used to call you. She told me about all the places you'd been and all the adventures you two had had together and I'd sit and wonder at the amazing things you used to do and the crazy things you used to say. As I grew up I remember you visiting. You were there for every birthday, every milestone in my life I look back on with a picture of in my hand there's you- beaming away in the back ground. I remember you appearing out of thin air in your blue box that was so much bigger on the inside and could take me anywhere I wanted to go. And I wanted to go everywhere. You took me back in time to help me with my homework, you took me to restaurants in galaxies far away when you were supposed to be babysitting me and then took me home three weeks later but my parents never minded. They always knew I was safe with you. I grew up in that blue box with you explaining the mysteries of the knowledge that was already, somehow, in my head. I was never afraid- no matter what we encountered while we were out exploring I always knew if you grabbed hold of my hand and we ran you'd get me home safely. You'd delivered me to my doorstep and push my nose gently announcing "until next time miss Melody-River Pond-Song." You never knew what to call me at that time. When I was still somewhere between being a child and a woman. Between names, between identities. I was too old for bedtime stories by then but mum would still tell me them anyway. "My raggedy Doctor" she would always begin only, by then, I could interrupt with _"Our_ raggedy Doctor, you mean?".

She looked at me almost sadly the first time I said that and for the longest time I didn't know why. Now I do. It was the beginning of her losing her little girl. As I'd grown up you'd always been my best friend. You taught me how to ride a bike and how to fly the TARDIS. You taught me the names of all the planets we'd ever visited and, you promised, would ever visit. You helped me through my awkward teenage years by playing tricks on the girls who made fun of me and the boys who wouldn't go out with me because of my big hair and even bigger attitude. You always told me not to change. You always made me smile. I lived my life waiting for the next time you'd turn up. My best friend, like you'd been my mum's before. Our Doctor. Our best friend. Then one day, quite suddenly, when I was twenty-two, you kissed me. And my life turned upside down.

We weren't doing anything particularly extraordinary, just sitting in my house having a cup of tea after one of our many adventures and then suddenly you kissed me. But it wasn't just any kiss. You kissed me like you'd been kissing me all you life, like you were born to kiss me and I to kiss you. And kiss you I did. My best friend, my most trusted confidant you'd always been and I'd never let myself dream you'd ever want anything more than that so the second you did I jumped at the chance. I'd never felt like that before but I have done since. Every time you kissed me since I feel that feeling of being finally complete. I remember we only broke apart because my dad walked in, sighing loudly and announcing "oh dear we're not at the kissing stage all ready are we? I thought we had a few more years left yet surely." I grinned and blushed and you straightened your bowtie.

As I grew older I learnt to love you in new ways. Learnt how to be with someone so completely that you can't imagine your life without them. We travelled together, never in the right order and never in a way that made sense to anyone but us but we travelled none the less, through time and space- to the ends of the earth and back again. I went to university and did normal things, led a normal life- well, as much as any girl who keeps her heart in a blue book and one ear out for a time machine constantly can do. I always knew it was madness. You'd turn up and I wouldn't know which version of you to expect and we'd laugh and run like lunatics and kiss as the sun set and it was all too good to be true. I kept telling myself this was all too brilliant to be real, that one day I'd wake up and my childhood friend would turn out to be just a dream but then… Then you asked me to marry you. It was freezing cold, I remember that, and Christmas Eve and we'd just been out to a carol concert in Victorian London and as we left the church you pulled me aside and got down on one knee and produced a box with a ring that sparkled brighter than the snow that fell all around us. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't speak. It was as much as I could manage to nod and smile as you wrapped your arms around me to stop me shivering from the cold. Or the shock. Still not too sure what was making me shiver.

It should never have worked, us, this thing we have. You loved me backwards while I loved you forwards- never knowing the secrets each other held but somehow it didn't matter because we loved each other inside out. We always needed each other. You needed me when you were too soft, too afraid to do what needed to be done and I needed you to calm me, to reason with me when no one else could. We've always been so similar to the point that our bickering nearly drove my mum insane but somehow it's always worked. We've taken on the world and come out smiling. No matter what we've faced we've faced it together. And so now here I am. Five years later from that Christmas Eve if you ask me and probably about five days later to you. At my best friend's wedding. My best friend for all my life and now my husband. Sometimes, you told me, every once in a while, someone lives happily ever after. And I think that might just be us.

**Review and make me smile. **


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